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Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

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Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#31
post #9

That title makes no sense whatsoever. In what way did it "rain marijuana"?

It fell from the sky. Also, people were able to pick it up out of a lake after it fell. Those are pretty rain-like attributes, and not often associated with packaged marijuana. Yes, it happened to be inside a crashing drug-running airplane as it fell, rather than precipitating from a cloud of water vapor, but that's a minor detail.

To be fair, what happened doesn't meet the definition of "rain": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rain

The closest would be: "a heavy fall // a rain of arrows", but even that implies multiple things coming down over an area, not a single plane crashing.

And all the weed was in close proximity to the plane, not like it was being dumped out as the plane flew overhead and spread out over a large area.

It's semantics, but the headline definitely makes you think that a storm is raining down weed when that's not at all what happened.

Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware business to the employees when he didn’t want to deal with the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster. Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear among climbers and skiers. Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer…

This is an excellent reply - thanks for sharing it! I think my favourite Yvon Chouinard/Tom Frost story is from the dawn of the Hexentrics path of innovation. They came to realize that pitons, which was their cash cow, was damaging rock. So they innovated against themselves and changed climbing! That's the hacker of my dreams - they're so driven by moving their passion forward that they'll innovate against themselves…

Disrupt yourself before someone else disrupts you!

Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#33
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know friend, Yosemite climbers in the 1970s were really amazing hackers. They didn't have anywhere near the level of equipment available today but innovated in some key areas. As an example, Yvon Chouinard (one of the Dirtbags referenced in the article) founded Patagonia. One of his biggest innovations was recognizing that some of the equipment his first company manufactured damaged rock, so they invented som…

Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware business to the employees when he didn’t want to deal with the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster. Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear among climbers and skiers. Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer…

Arguably, this comment is incomplete without mention of the "OD" (Original Dirtbag), Fred Beckey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Beckey

Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware business to the employees when he didn’t want to deal with the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster. Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear among climbers and skiers. Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer…

Arguably, this comment is incomplete without mention of the "OD" (Original Dirtbag), Fred Beckey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Beckey

[deleted]

Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#36
This 2005 (claimed to be from Mountain Gazette in the late 70s) repro includes some hiker nostalgia.

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic%20id=6867...

More discussion: [http://www.whitneyzone.com/wz/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/to...]

Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#37
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know friend, Yosemite climbers in the 1970s were really amazing hackers. They didn't have anywhere near the level of equipment available today but innovated in some key areas. As an example, Yvon Chouinard (one of the Dirtbags referenced in the article) founded Patagonia. One of his biggest innovations was recognizing that some of the equipment his first company manufactured damaged rock, so they invented som…

Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware business to the employees when he didn’t want to deal with the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster. Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear among climbers and skiers. Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer…

Given your interest, there’s a Tom Frost documentary [1] in progress (I saw an early cut as part of an SFFILM event). There’s a lot of great material, but the film wasn’t ready (late 2019?) and I assume the pandemic paused their release plans.

[1] https://flatlanderfilms.com/about-the-film/

Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know friend, Yosemite climbers in the 1970s were really amazing hackers. They didn't have anywhere near the level of equipment available today but innovated in some key areas. As an example, Yvon Chouinard (one of the Dirtbags referenced in the article) founded Patagonia. One of his biggest innovations was recognizing that some of the equipment his first company manufactured damaged rock, so they invented som…

Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware business to the employees when he didn’t want to deal with the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster. Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear among climbers and skiers. Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer…

To add one, Doug Philips started Metolious Climbing hacking together the first active protection gear in his garage and selling them in the parking lot at Smith Rock. Bootstraped the company by occasionally building houses, and used metal working machines off-hours at friends shops.

Full story here: https://www.metoliusclimbing.com/metolius-origins.html

Re: Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite (2019)

#39
post #19

What on earth is this trash website? For a supposedly enlightened community, HN sure seems to happily upvote low quality clickbait headlines that are barely accurate.

I don't know friend, Yosemite climbers in the 1970s were really amazing hackers. They didn't have anywhere near the level of equipment available today but innovated in some key areas. As an example, Yvon Chouinard (one of the Dirtbags referenced in the article) founded Patagonia. One of his biggest innovations was recognizing that some of the equipment his first company manufactured damaged rock, so they invented som…

The climbing and mountaineering community has always been full of hackers.

On my side of the pond there have been Don Whillans (Whillans harness, Whillans Box tent for Himalayan faces), Hamish McInnes (Terrordactyls - the first drop pick ice axes) and Laurent Grivel (12 point crampon) amongst others.

Maybe the greatest climbing hacker was Andrew Irvine (who disappeared high on Everest in 1924 with George Leigh Mallory). Mallory was the greatest climber of his generation, and over the years there has been questioning on why he took the relatively inexperienced Andrew Irvine with him on a summit bid (rather than say the vastly more experienced Neville Odell). But Irvine was an engineering genius. Every night he was rebuilding the oxygen sets, learning from the experience of the previous day to make them better - to give them the oxygen they needed to survive at that altitude.

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